Saturday, September 25, 2004

death tastes like chicken

"As possible as I can" is one of those classic Konglish phrases you hear at the hagwon almost every day. Another good one is the question, "Do you eat dog food?" --which means, "Have you ever eaten dog meat?" Dog meat is mighty tasty, even though it's prepared in a revolting manner. The whole business of meat-eating isn't pretty; you either reconcile yourself with this fact or you don't.

After writing the previous post about terrorism, I started to wonder-- as I think most of us do these days-- about what it'd be like to be in an orange jumpsuit awaiting the bite of the terrorist's knife into my neck. And then a distracting question suddenly popped into my brain: "What does death taste like?"

Near as I can figure, death-- by which I really mean the afterlife and our view of it-- tastes like chicken.

Chicken is extremely popular throughout much of the world, and statistically speaking, all chickens die. Of the chickens that die (no reported cases of "bodily chicken ascension" so far), many, if not most, are eaten. Some chickens, still alive, are actually eaten to death. Most, however, are eaten soon after death (often involving beheading, strangely enough). My point is that there seems to be a very high correlation between chickens, death, and eating. It therefore seems only fair to theorize that, to the extent that death has a gustatory aspect, this aspect is, for lack of a better word, "poultronic."

It's interesting that we tend to visualize death (i.e., the afterlife) but don't think to perceive it with our other senses. I'm not even sure what fancy verbs we'd use to denote such sensory outreach.

see --> visualize (from visual faculties)
hear --> auditize? (from auditory faculties)
smell --> olfactorize? (from olfactory faculties)
taste --> gustatize? (from gustatory faculties)
feel --> tactize? (from tactile faculties)

So what would death/afterlife smell like? Sound like? Feel like? I don't have any faith that death's poultronic taste will be accompanied by a correspondingly poultronic smell, sound, and feel. Besides, when I check out, I don't want to be greeted by the odor of musty feathers, a chorus of mad clucking, and the ripping of ghostly fighting-cock claws into my immortal soul. Here's hoping that death smells like roses, sounds like Satchmo, and feels like something hot, wet, and pink.

O Jesus, My Sweet Jesus H. Christ
Send not Thy Deathchickens to claim my soul
O Jesus who Doth Get His Holy Freak On
Send Thine Angel of Mercy
Not the Poulet Sans Pitié
And let me enter the exalted gates of the Kingdom of Madness
Borne aloft by my bright shining Scrotum of Glory
In Your Most Holy Name, Amen





UPDATE: In keeping with the above theological shenanigans, I hereby present you a link just emailed to me from a friend at CUA: Republicans admit sending around flyers claiming that liberals plan on banning the Bible. Heh. NB: the article notes that VP candidate John Edwards has called on President Bush to condemn the flyer campaign. In other words, the article isn't implying that Bush is behind this latest piece of political goofiness. I also think that most moderate Republicans would themselves have a good laugh at this campaign. There might be religious conservatives who are, in fact, stupid enough to believe that the Good Book will end up banned under a Democratic presidency. Let these folk squawk and flap and join the ranks of the chorusing Deathchickens. Hell needs and welcomes theological cluckers of all religious persuasions.

UPDATE 2: Damn. A Google search of the string "death tastes like chicken" reveals how unoriginal my sentiment is.

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